Before You Knew My Name

by Jacqueline Bublitz

  Something Ruby Jones starts doing from this night on: she goes looking for the dead. She searches out names and faces, she reads obituaries and crime reports and historical accounts, and the names engraved on statues and park benches. New deaths, old deaths, she does her best not to discriminate, as she stops over the name of every deceased person she encounters, takes the time to speak their names out loud.

  The dead, she soon sees, are everywhere. Lost to cancer and school shootings. Police brutality. Domestic violence and drownings. Kidnappings and war, and hearts with too many holes. She finds lists and lists of ways to die and lists of names to say out loud; for the rest of her life she will pay attention. She will let the departed know they matter, especially those whose lives might otherwise be passed over. She will say their names, sound out the syllables of their existence whenever she can.

  She has no name to sound out loud for me.

  I’m Alice, I whisper to her many times. Alice Lee. But she can’t hear me over the car horns and the sirens and the doors slamming. I’m lost in the buzz of her phone and the sound of the shower running, the hiss of the coffee pot downstairs, and the pad of her feet against the ground. My voice is quieter still when she is laughing or crying or gasping against the memory of Ash’s mouth, or when the slate eyes of a man she has just met flash behind her own, inexplicably replacing Ash’s face when she comes.

  The thing is. When the dead speak back, we are seldom loud enough to be heard over the clamour of all that living going on.

  Two weeks pass by, and no one has come to claim me. They’ve made their posters, held their press conferences, asked for anyone who knows anything to come forward. They’ve attempted to put flesh around my bones, but all the while, that flesh falls further and further away. And, still, no one comes for me. Still, they call me Jane. To be clear, I don’t think I am a Jane at all. Jane seems like someone older, someone refined, with a real job and an apartment in her own name. Just like the one Noah lives in. Except, without the dogs, and maybe with big white flowers in vases all over the place, and maybe without a piano in the middle of the living room. I don’t think Jane plays the piano. She does the New York Times crossword, and practises mindfulness, and any freckles on her nose were lasered off just before her thirty-fifth birthday, and though she never admits it, she’s had Botox injections every six weeks for the last two years. That’s Jane. She’s successful and polite, and she fits right into the corners of her name. And it isn’t my name.

  It isn’t my name.

  I want my name back. This name that was mine from the beginning. That’s what I want them to use when they talk about me. I want the news stories to say Alice Lee was a girl who lived in New York City, and she was just starting to fit into the corners of her own name, her own life. Alice Lee was eighteen years old, and she had long blonde hair her lover used to wrap around his fingers, forcing her neck back so he could bear down on her skin with his teeth. Alice Lee loved that, and she loved taking photographs with the camera she stole, and she was starting to love Noah and his quiet kindness, and she loved the silver glitter of the Chrysler Building, no matter how many times she gazed up at its spire.

  Alice Lee was someone who missed her best friend Tammy, and once, when she was six, a man pulled up in front of her house and tried to get her into his blue car, beckoning from the driver’s seat, saying he had a special secret to share. Alice Lee was the girl who froze for a full minute before she ran inside, and she was the girl who never told anyone about that minute and that man in the blue car.

  This was Alice Lee. She never broke any bones and her teeth were straight and strong, and her mother died, and so did she. Not the same way, but not so differently, either. She liked fish tacos and fairy lights and hated the taste of licorice. She hadn’t read nearly enough books, and she was busy falling in love with the world, when she was yanked right out of it.

  Smile. Is that what he said to her, just before? Or during? There were sounds he made she couldn’t hear, wouldn’t hear, but she’d made him angry, hadn’t she? By not answering his questions. She froze instead, just like that day when the strange man in his blue car tried to tell her a secret. She knew not to go toward him, could smell the danger between them, but for a full minute, she forgot how to move. And this time, Alice Lee remembered too late.

  I will go to Hart Island. If no one claims me, my body will join a million others on that speck of land in Long Island Sound. A pretty sounding name for a mass of dirt, endlessly churned, bones buried on top of bones. Three persons deep, they say. When they remember those bones belong to people.

  They might loan my body out to a university first, before they take me to the island. I wouldn’t mind that so much; I like the idea that some parts of my body might help fix other bodies, other warm, kinetic beings in need of repair. I have no further use for this mass of calcium and marrow, for the hair and fingernails and those blue, blue eyes. I don’t get to coil my muscles; I don’t get to taste something before it reaches my mouth or come so intensely that I’m flying. I don’t suppose it really matters what they do to my body now.

  There used to be an asylum on Hart Island. There was an asylum here, too, next to the mortuary. The dead and the damaged, side by side, out of sight. When a famous person dies, a princess or a politician, say, the public gets to see it. Their funeral is kind of like a celebration. There are flowers and candles and photographs, and songs that tell you something about who the person was before they died. The ones left behind stand up and share their memories, they take the life that was lived, and they put a frame around it. So that people don’t forget. I will not get flowers and candles and songs. If I am buried on Hart Island, no one will even know my favourite song. It’s ‘Try A Little Tenderness’, by the way. Otis Redding. The first time my mother played me that old record, I cried. I loved his soulful voice so much. And those lyrics—it seemed like he was singing to me, about me. Because we do get wearied, girls like me. Not the kind of song you’d play at a funeral, I suppose. But at least I would be there. Present at my own mourning. If they take me to Hart Island, it’s all gone. My favourite song, and my favourite word (sarsaparilla), and my first ever crush (Michael from Mrs O’Connor’s class, fourth grade). People mourn the future that is lost when someone dies. But what about the past? What about all that is bound up in a person, and all the things that disappear when they die?

  And what if you’ve even lost your name? What then? You will be placed in a plain pine coffin, and an inmate from Rikers will dig your grave and lower you down. Bones upon bones, names unknown, buried with the lost and the forgotten. An asylum for the dead.

  I would like to be remembered better than this. Josh says we are lucky. That people will pay closer attention to a girl like me. But what if they never find out who I really am? Even worse—what if they stop caring about me once they do know?

  What if it turns out I’m the wrong kind of victim, too?

  Don’t go there. Don’t do that.

  Skirt’s too short, street’s too dark.

  Why couldn’t you—who did you—how did you—?

  When you go around asking for trouble like that. What exactly did you think would happen!

  Look at all the things they tell us. Listen to the words ringing in our ears as the bodies stack up. As another young woman is added to the pile of limbs and hearts and hopes and dreams, and all the things she’ll never do. Because of all the things she didn’t do.

  Or all the things she did.

  That’s the part they seldom make clear. When they decide who gets to be the right kind of dead girl.

  If they think of us at all.

  FIFTEEN

  THE DAY BEFORE HER FIRST OFFICIAL DEATH CLUB MEETING, Ruby spends her afternoon down at the morgue on 1st Avenue. She lingers in the small lobby, silently watching people in uniforms swing through the double doors on the other side of the room, heading, she assumes, to the bowels of the building, where the real work happens. Imagining coolers and plastic-wrapped
bodies and the rows of carved up remains down there, frozen under her feet. Ruminating on ribs cracked open, on organs scooped out, the recordings of last meals and the weight of hearts, and in the case of the Jane and John Does, the blank spaces where their names should be. Thinking, of course, about me.

  Standing awkwardly in this room, Ruby is nearly as close to me as she was that Tuesday morning exactly two weeks ago, when mere metres separated us. A longing to see me again has brought her down here, crazy as she thinks this might make her. Sometimes, she even finds herself thinking she would go back to that morning down by the river if she could. It feels sacred to her now, that time we had before those officers arrived, though she would not think to name it as such. Sacred is my word for it, when she still worries that I have become an obsession. Something she needs to resolve.

  I know better.

  Here at the morgue, Ruby wonders whether other people are getting closer to solving the mystery for her. Has Detective O’Byrne pored through enough files, looked over enough photographs and searched enough databases to have something click over in his mind, start spiralling toward my identity? And will that inevitably lead the detective to the man who did this? Ruby thinks about this more than she’d like to these days, too. Thinks about him. The fact that my murderer is out there somewhere, knowing what he did. Getting away with it and going about his life, which seems to Ruby so horribly, grossly unfair.

  Feeling conspicuous in the small, sparsely decorated lobby, she focuses her attention on the Latin motto written across the wall behind the front desk. Mouthing the ancient words, getting lost in their rhythms, she doesn’t realise she’s speaking out loud again, until the impassive man behind the desk looks up, asks if there is anything that he can help her with.

  Ruby’s cheeks colour.

  I don’t think you can help me, she wants to answer, looking past him to the double doors, swinging. Not unless you know the girl down there.

  There are people in this building who know my body as intimately as a lover might. They know of the tiny mole in the arch of my left foot. The faint scar on my left elbow from a childhood scab that got infected. They know my pubic area was waxed a few weeks before my death. Underarms and legs shaved, perhaps the day before. They know I am not a virgin, that my eyes are blue, and one or two of the male pathologists stop, as they examine my body, to think how pretty I must have been, without half of my face smashed in. Privately, they agree that the forensic artist’s sketches haven’t quite captured the fullness of my lips or the honey of my hair.

  Some men get obsessed with the dead as much as the living.

  And it’s not just these men, the ones who are required to look at me, either. Through Ruby’s ever-increasing time spent online, she has been introduced to a thriving underground network of amateur detectives who frequent forums and websites dedicated to their passion: solving murder mysteries. Anonymous people, strangers to me and to each other, these true crime enthusiasts spend much of their waking hours tapping out theories on everything from decades-old murders to brand new cases like mine, their hunches and what ifs glowing out from computer screens across the globe.

  The first time Ruby found a discussion thread specifically focused on my murder investigation, she almost couldn’t believe it. But she is used to it now, because, with my identity still a mystery, the case has generated a lot of interest online. Initially, the less generous speculations about me made her mad, but she’s gotten used to that, too. There are people who insist I’m this druggie chick they used to know, and others who swear I’m a prostitute they met somewhere, sometime, but thankfully, most of the forum members she encounters are circumspect when discussing the possibilities and probabilities of my life.

  I am not an unusual case to this true crime crowd, not by any means. But I am shiny and new, a fresh face on the list of lost and founds they pore over, all the Janes and Johns, and the people who got to keep their names when they met their mysterious, nefarious ends.

  Some men get obsessed with the dead as much as the living.

  To be fair, many people see their fascination with us as a kind of public service. An extra set of consolations, and more importantly, an extra set of eyes on the prize. These are the men and women who dedicate themselves to solving cold cases, who learn the names of the official investigators assigned to these cases, and don’t hesitate to share their theories with both the police and each other. These self-taught criminologists share concerns about under-resourced police departments and clues potentially missed; they are a small army advancing through the nation of the dead. Points are scored if they can pair a recently discovered Jane or John with a known missing person. A game of Snap is played out via the keyboard, even if the cards rarely seem to match.

  I am now part of the game, flipped over, examined. Riverside Jane. The more famous amongst us, the ones who get whole message boards for themselves, are all given nicknames like this. Main Street Jane, and Pit Stop John. Clearwater Jane, Suitcase Jane, Laneway Jane, Bus Station Jane, Barrel Jane, Sunoco Jane, Rolling Stone Jane (the last, because of the T-shirt she was wearing when they found her severed torso). Does anyone else think that Walmart Jane could be NamUs case number—and so begins a flurry of conversation and keyboard clicks, led by these anonymous, earnest matchmakers.

  Ruby might have only recently discovered this world, but she has quickly learned its ways. She knows, for example, that I don’t yet have my statistics listed over on the NamUs website, the official National Missing and Unidentified Persons System these self-appointed sleuths pull much of their information from. When she finds information about me on an unofficial site, when she reads: ‘Riverside Jane: Unknown female found 15 April 2014—White/Caucasian—Cause of Death: Strangulation’, she understands there is so much more to come. If my case remains unsolved, I will eventually get a NamUs profile of my own. It will contain an inventory of my remains (all parts recovered), and the condition of those remains will be outlined in polite terms (no decomposition or putrefaction for this Jane). There will be details about my height and weight and estimated age, along with an itemised list of the clothing I was wearing when my body was recovered. I will be allocated a searchable case number; I will become a series of check boxes and data entries, as the known facts of my case are divided up and classified.

  A Dewy Decimal System for the dead, Ruby thought, when she first visited the NamUs site. She sat cross-legged on her bed, sipping at her vodka, as she clicked through this seemingly endless catalogue of the dead and the missing. She soon found herself unable to swallow, the alcohol coating her tongue and burning the roof of her mouth. Though Josh had suggested as much, the volume of cases on the NamUs site floored her. There were so many people missing, and so many people with numbers where their names should be.

  Snap!

  No one has come close to finding a match for Riverside Jane.

  Ruby has frequented those true crime forums enough times now that she too sometimes calls me Riverside Jane. She cannot know how much I despise it; I do not wish to be tethered in this way to the place it happened. It. The thing they all want to know more about.

  Central to this game, perhaps even more important than what it was, is whodunit. I am coming to understand that for many, my identity only has meaning in so far as it might help identify him. Him. The everyman behind each mystery, each sad, bad Jane Doe story. Never mind her after that: as soon as they know his name, he’ll be the one they talk about. He’ll be the one they want to know, the one who takes over the narrative.

  They make movies about these men. Examine them from every angle. He becomes the central figure in the story, and the more damage he’s caused, the better.

  If and when he’s caught, people will no doubt marvel at how he nearly got away with his crime, feel something akin to admiration for what this so-called ordinary guy almost pulled off. How did that nice man next door fool so many people? I never suspected a thing! Isn’t this what the neighbours always say, a little awe creeping in?<
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  You won’t find Detective O’Byrne on any of those discussion threads. But here is something he is certain of: he will do it again. The nice man who murdered me. Have you ever taken years to step up to the edge of something you were wary of, and as soon as you jumped, it was like all the fear slackened, dissolved on impact? So that when you landed, you couldn’t remember, not for the life of you, what you had been so frightened of before? That’s how men like him explain it to O’Byrne. When they know their time is up.

  It was surprisingly easy to kill her. They all say that. As if they might have done it earlier, had they only known. That’s why so many of them go back for more. You can only relive the first one so long, before you start forgetting what it was like to take a life.

  My murderer remembers. He walked past this very building today in fact, pausing outside the lobby where Ruby now stands, her cheeks bright red, as the man behind the desk repeats his question.

  ‘Is there something I can help you with, ma’am?’

  Embarrassed, Ruby shakes her head, mutters a thank you, and bolts from the lobby before further questions can be asked. As she leaves, her footsteps echo over my remains, but I manage to keep pace with her as she makes her way back uptown.

  I thought about following him, too. When he came by. But I only got as far as the edge of him before I pulled back.

  I will try harder next time.

  See, Ruby didn’t recognise that Latin motto. Unable to translate the words, she had no idea it was a promise. But I know what it says, there on the wall above my dead body:

  Let Conversation Cease, Let Laughter Flee. This is the Place Where Death Delights to Help the Living.

  I do want to help the living. But I’m not yet ready to see where he goes.

  They come for us all over this world.